So Is It Over? A View From the Center of the Storm
Not if the following is true:
But how can he win Ohio? Simple. Provisional ballots. When voters are challenged, they cast a "provisional ballot," the validity of which is verified 11 days after the election.
Right now Bush is winning by about 140,000 votes in Ohio. Democrats say there will be about 250,000 provisional ballots. It's fair to assume that the overwhelming majority are Democratic, for the simple reason that Republicans systematically challenge ballots and Democrats do not. Four years ago, 90 percent of those provisional ballots in Ohio were ultimately accepted.
Jonathan Chait in TNR thinks not.
The key questions are: how many provisional ballots are there?
1) The Kerry camp says 250,000, Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell says he does not know, but told CNN last night that number or even more was "within the realm of possibility." If this is true, there is no way Kerry should concede or the network can call it.
Why do we think those are Kerry ballots?
2) Most of these historically are by new voters who did not go to the right place. These went for Kerry 56-44% this year. Many of these belong to people in urban areas (Kerry supporters)where voting continued so late, they were handed paper ballots to vote. ALL of these paper ballots are "provisional" ballots and have not been counted yet. I can tell you from local news and talking to people in Columbus the areas still voting last last night were Cleveland, Ohio State campus area, other selected counties and college towns. Some people, the Washington Post reports, were in line until 2:30 some having refused to take provisional ballots and wanting to wait for the mahcines in the hopes of having their vote matter. The republicans were challenging voters at the polls, democrats were not, hence many of the "invalid" ballots that would have been filed by Republicans have been screened out. One more thing, Bush voters tend to be at an age where they are less likely to move around, more stable and hence got their registration forms. Folks that did not, and went to the wrong place simply because of a change of adddress filed a provisional ballot yesterday.
How long will it take?
3) At least 11 days by state law to count these ballots. Then, each county has to look at each of them indiviually to decide if the are valid. People wanting a quick result will love this part- it can take up to an hour per ballot to decide. Lawyers will love this- contrary to Bush v. Gore (and please notice, despite all the protesations, who filed this lawsuit and who is the defendant) each county has a different standard. Hanging chad? County by county. Corrected address? County by county.
Why was this not fixed earlier?
4) We had four years to prepare for this and still has not happened. With the crippled economy here the budget was cut for improved voting machines and staff. Also, the sheer volume of new registrants overwhelmed the system and did not allow time for the usual "purging" of the voter rolls this year. I and many others have been predicting this exact scenario for weeks. (See my brilliant analysis above for details.)
My old column on October 24th ends with the following:
I wish I had not been so frustratingly right.
But how can he win Ohio? Simple. Provisional ballots. When voters are challenged, they cast a "provisional ballot," the validity of which is verified 11 days after the election.
Right now Bush is winning by about 140,000 votes in Ohio. Democrats say there will be about 250,000 provisional ballots. It's fair to assume that the overwhelming majority are Democratic, for the simple reason that Republicans systematically challenge ballots and Democrats do not. Four years ago, 90 percent of those provisional ballots in Ohio were ultimately accepted.
Jonathan Chait in TNR thinks not.
The key questions are: how many provisional ballots are there?
1) The Kerry camp says 250,000, Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell says he does not know, but told CNN last night that number or even more was "within the realm of possibility." If this is true, there is no way Kerry should concede or the network can call it.
Why do we think those are Kerry ballots?
2) Most of these historically are by new voters who did not go to the right place. These went for Kerry 56-44% this year. Many of these belong to people in urban areas (Kerry supporters)where voting continued so late, they were handed paper ballots to vote. ALL of these paper ballots are "provisional" ballots and have not been counted yet. I can tell you from local news and talking to people in Columbus the areas still voting last last night were Cleveland, Ohio State campus area, other selected counties and college towns. Some people, the Washington Post reports, were in line until 2:30 some having refused to take provisional ballots and wanting to wait for the mahcines in the hopes of having their vote matter. The republicans were challenging voters at the polls, democrats were not, hence many of the "invalid" ballots that would have been filed by Republicans have been screened out. One more thing, Bush voters tend to be at an age where they are less likely to move around, more stable and hence got their registration forms. Folks that did not, and went to the wrong place simply because of a change of adddress filed a provisional ballot yesterday.
How long will it take?
3) At least 11 days by state law to count these ballots. Then, each county has to look at each of them indiviually to decide if the are valid. People wanting a quick result will love this part- it can take up to an hour per ballot to decide. Lawyers will love this- contrary to Bush v. Gore (and please notice, despite all the protesations, who filed this lawsuit and who is the defendant) each county has a different standard. Hanging chad? County by county. Corrected address? County by county.
Why was this not fixed earlier?
4) We had four years to prepare for this and still has not happened. With the crippled economy here the budget was cut for improved voting machines and staff. Also, the sheer volume of new registrants overwhelmed the system and did not allow time for the usual "purging" of the voter rolls this year. I and many others have been predicting this exact scenario for weeks. (See my brilliant analysis above for details.)
My old column on October 24th ends with the following:
As a response to this, the Secretary of State, Republican Kenneth Blackwell, sent out instructions to disregard these type of [provisional] ballots. The Democrats filed suit in court and initailly won, only to have this decision reversed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. So it looks like right now, these ballots will not count. But here is the best part- provisional ballots will not be counted until 11 days past Election Day! As Blackwell says in the article "That could be the ballgame here- provisional ballots from new registrants." New voters are the most likely to have this problem, and most new registrants are Democrats this year. The upshot of this is, if Kerry wins on Election Day- and it appears to be trending very slightly that way, this issue will more likely fade away. If Bush wins close, and the Democrats believe these ballots would turn this around, look out, this will be in court for quite a while. Would we really want an election decided because I went to the school and not the church, so my vote did not get counted?
What a mess. I cannot wait for all the lawyers to descend and for the media frenzy to start...
I wish I had not been so frustratingly right.
posted by Scott L. Stuart at
8:15 AM
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